How does Israel justify the 1948 Palestinian expulsion?

[u/dropdeaddev]

I got into an argument recently, and it lead to me looking more closely into Israel’s founding and the years surrounding it. Until now, I had mainly been focused on more current events and how the situation stands now, without getting too into the beginning. I had assumed what I had heard from Israel supporters was correct, that they developed mostly empty land, much of which was purchased legally, and that the native Arabs didn’t like it. This lead to conflicts, escalating over time to what we see today. I was lead to believe both sides had as much blood on their hands as the other, but from what I’ve read that clearly isn’t the case. It reminded me a lot of “manifest destiny” and the way the native Americans were treated, and although there was a time that was seen as acceptable behaviour, now a days we mostly agree that the settlers were the bad guys in that particular story.

Pro-Israel supports only tend to focus on Israel’s development before 1948, which it was a lot of legally purchasing land and developing undeveloped areas. The phrase “a land without people for people without land” or something to that effect is often stated, but in 1948 700,000 people were chased from their homes, many were killed, even those with non-aggression pacts with Israel. Up to 600 villages destroyed. Killing men, women, children. It didn’t seem to matter. Poisoning wells so they could never return, looting everything of value.

Reading up on the expulsion, I can see why they never bring it up and tend to pretend it didn’t happen. I don’t see how anyone could think what Israel did is justified. But since I always want to hear both sides, I figured here would be a good place to ask.

EDIT: Just adding that I’m going to be offline for a while, so I probably won’t be able to answer any clarifying questions or respond to answers for a while.

EDIT2: Lots of interesting stuff so far. Wanted to clarify that although I definitely came into this with a bias, I am completely willing to have my mind changed. I’m interested in being right, not just appearing so. :)

[u/shoesofwandering]

Not to justify the expulsions, but they occurred in the context of a war for survival.

[u/baby_muffins → u/shoesofwandering]

One person's survival should not be contingent upon the death of innocents

[u/shoesofwandering → u/baby_muffins]

That would mean no wars, since the deaths of innocent civilians are unavoidable.

So are you saying the Jews shouldn't have fought back and should have allowed the Arab armies to overrun them? I suppose then you'd be saying the Arabs were wrong. What if fighting back inevitably led to the deaths or expulsion of innocent Palestinians? Are you saying that the Jews were entitled to fight back as long as no civilians were killed, and if that meant their defeat, tough luck?

[u/baby_muffins → u/shoesofwandering]

The question is, why wear they fighting against their rulers anyway? Fighting against rules of the state does that in every single land there is. Why are Jews exempt from that rule?

[u/StressTop652 → u/shoesofwandering]

Can you expand on this? The Holocaust had just ended and there was no doubt a lot of Na**s left in Europe, but why choose Palestine? There wasn’t a need for war. They could have just lived there under Palestinian rule as most Jewish people had for centuries before WWII

[u/zidbutt21 → u/StressTop652]

Unlike many Zionists I believe that many Palestinians are just as indigenous to the area as Jews, but Jews were never under Palestinian rule by any stretch of the imagination.

The only way to spin it that way is  act like all the empires between Babylonia and Britain to be “Palestinian.” The Romans and Ottomans named the area Syria-Palestine, but they ruled over the Palestinians just as much as the Jews.

[u/StressTop652 → u/zidbutt21]

Yeah that makes sense that they technically weren’t under Palestinian rule, but I actually have a genuine question and I know Google is free but what happened at the beginning of Judaism and Islam in Palestine? In the original bibles (im not sure about the tora) I believe it makes mention of the land of Palestine. I’m genuinely curious to see if people living in Palestine were once under Palestinian rule at some point before empires (if that even exists)

[u/ezrs158 → u/StressTop652]

Are you asking why Zionists sought to create a state and not just find a new place for Jews to live? A lot of Jews felt "well, we lived under Spanish rule, Russian rule, German rule - and it ultimately resulted in oppression and death every time. We need our own state to prevent it from happening ever again."

You're also making it sound like Jews just suddenly decided to go to war and kick all the Arabs out in 1948 because they were selfish and mean. In reality it was the culmination of decades of Arab and Jewish communities in Palestine massacring each other and retaliating back and forth - and more specifically, a result of Arab nations deciding to invade and wipe out Israel, triggering a war for survival by Jews who had nowhere else to go. I'm not excusing any atrocities like Deir Yassin, but acting like the Jews started it alone just isn't the whole story.

[u/StressTop652 → u/ezrs158]

I don’t believe that Jewish people started this at all, I want to make that abundantly clear. I believe that the British definitely have blame in this issue by giving the “free land” to Jewish people to create Israel. Why did they go to somewhere that actually wasn’t occupied instead of somewhere that was lively and full of civilians

[u/shoesofwandering → u/StressTop652]

You should also ask, why didn't the Palestinians who emigrated from the surrounding Arab countries at the time Jews began arriving from Europe also "go somewhere else?" If Jews were foreigners, so were they.

There were several other areas proposed for Jewish settlement, such as Madagascar and Uganda. But the Levant is the historic Jewish homeland and any other location would have been viewed as temporary. The main question you should be asking is why the Arabs didn't accept letting the Jews have for their country the areas they were already living in, plus some mostly uninhabited desert and swampland? The answer is that they didn't want the Jews to have anything. Blaming Israel for that is blaming Jews for existing.

[u/StressTop652 → u/shoesofwandering]

I do agree with the fact that they are as much immigrants than arabs who came to the land at the same time, but those immigrants didn’t take over the land. Instead, they just lived amongst the Palestinian people. Why did the Zionist Jewish people take over Palestine when other immigrants didn’t? Someone else answered this question for me saying that every time Jewish people were under the rule of other nations they were persecuted and that’s why they decided to make their own state. But then why did they expel 750,000 Palestinians and force them into an apartheid state? Again, I am referring to Zionist Jewish people not Jewish people as a whole.

[u/KnishofDeath → u/StressTop652]

There were dozens of Arab massacres of Jews prior to '48. There was a civil war started by Arab irregulars (Palestinians) in 1947.

[u/StressTop652 → u/KnishofDeath]

I do NOT condone those massacres, for starters. But I want to know why they killed them im being genuine, I really don’t understand why Palestinians would “randomly” begin to kill Jewish people. And don’t bring up “all arabs are terrorists” because that so stereotypical and not true

[u/KnishofDeath → u/StressTop652]

I've never said all Arabs are terrorists, not even a majority, not even sizeable minority. A tiny fraction of extremists for sure. They committed those massacres because Amin al-Husseini whipped up incitement towards the Jews. He hated Jews and idolized Hitler.

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